Past Events
March 29, 2011
Organisms have been making exquisite inorganic materials for over 500 million years. Although these materials have many desired physical properties such as strength, regularity, and environmental benign processing, the types of materials that organisms have evolved to work with are limited. However, there are many properties of living systems that could be potentially harnessed by researchers to make advanced technologies that are smarter, more adaptable, and that are synthesized to be compatible with the environment.
March 29, 2011
The U.S. has established aggressive targets for the production of renewable fuels as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007. EISA calls for the generation of 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels by 2022. Our challenge is to find cost-effective, sustainable, and environmentally responsible biofuels. This presentation will argue the case for integrating techno-economic, location, and carbon emission analysis to meet this challenge.
March 28, 2011
The development of emerging grid-scale energy storage technologies offers great potential to improve the architecture and operation of the electrical grid. This is especially important in the face of increased reliance on clean, dependable electricity and with the influx of renewable generation and smart grid technology. However, at the present, grid-scale energy storage is still in an early, developing stage.
March 17, 2011
The recent tragic earthquake in Japan has focused attention once again on the safety risks of nuclear power. However, it can be hard to tell from the news coverage exactly what is going on and what are the real associated risks. Were the plants in Japan designed to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis as strong as the ones that struck on Friday? Should they have been?
Join nuclear specialists and members of the MIT Energy Club for a roundtable discussion of the nuclear situation in Japan and some of its potential implications.